


Love Too Will Ruin Us

by theyshotmyclown



Category: In The Flesh, In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: M/M, i have nothing to say, sorry for the foreshadowing angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-19
Updated: 2014-08-19
Packaged: 2018-02-13 21:40:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2166135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theyshotmyclown/pseuds/theyshotmyclown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Ren, you know it's not like that. You're my best mate.” His fingers are in Kieren's hair now, loosely, resting at the nape of his neck. Kieren closes his eyes and tries to imagine standing like this all night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Too Will Ruin Us

It's past 11pm when his phone vibrates on the bedside table and Kieren looks up from his sketchbook, frowning. Rick's name glows blue on the screen. Kieren's throat squeezes shut and he drops the sketchbook on his bed; Rick never calls him, not this late, when Bill could so easily listen outside the door.

He flips the phone open and waits.

“Ren? Ren, you there?”

Rick's talking too fast. Kieren nods and then remembers to speak. “Yeah, I'm here.”

“Dad's plastered and shouting again and-” the normally gruff voice cracks and Kieren winces. Rick swallows on the other end of the line. “I just wanted to talk to you, yeah? Hear your voice and that.”

Kieren can't help smiling slightly, sadly. “Big girl. Are you at home? Do... do you want me to come over?” Even as he says it he knows Rick will say no, and catches himself wondering how well his arrival at the Macys' would go down anyway.

“Nah. Nah, it's okay mate. I'm having a walk around, fresh air and that. Don't think dad would like it if you rocked up, what with...” he trails off, he sound of his feet tracking through fallen leaves filling the gap left by the reminder of Bill Macy's prejudices. “Don't s'pose you fancy coming out for a bit?”

Kieren looks at his sketchbook, Jem's face staring back at him half drawn. He's seventeen and still under the curfew set by his parents and it's quarter past eleven at night, and Rick wants him to come on a walk.

Kieren jams his boots on and shrugs on a jacket, glad he's still got his jeans on. He tucks his phone under his chin. “Yeah, okay. Give us a sec.”

 

–

 

The night is cold, biting with the first hint of autumn. Kieren tugs his cuffs down over his hands and squints into the dark; he spots Rick idling by a lamppost, hood up and trainers scuffing against the kerb, so he hurries down the drive until they're level. “Hey.”

Rick grins at him, and Kieren feels his chest swell. “I'm a bad influence, me,” Rick nudges his shoulder into Kieren's, “getting the golden boy to sneak out after dark.”

“Fuck off.”

They start off towards the green, a sort of aimless walk you can only really achieve in close company, where neither minds where they end up. The subject of Bill Macy follows them so heavily it's almost as if the man himself is there, ready to pull Rick home at the drop of a hat. As they pass the post office, Kieren can't take the unacknowledged ghost any longer. "What happened? 

Rick shrugs, eyes down. “Dunno. Just couldn't stay in the house, not when mum had gone to bed already. He keeps goin' on about the army and getting me away from Roarton, y'know, out of _village life_. Once he'd drunk enough I just let myself out.”

Kieren kicks a crushed can of cider into the hedgerow and curls his hands into fists inside his pockets. “When your dad says Roarton he means me.”

“Nah, c'mon—”

“Rick _._ ” Kieren stops, and raises an eyebrow. “I haven't been allowed to set foot in your house for three years because of a sodding mix CD. He thinks I'm, I dunno, tainting you with my _artistic nature_.” Rick snorts, and Kieren's fleetingly glad. He tries a smirk of his own. “It's fucked that your dad reckons Afghanistan is a better bet than me, though, eh?”

Rick looks at him then, and brushes his cheek with a calloused thumb. “Ren, you know it's not like that. You're my best mate.” His fingers are in Kieren's hair now, loosely, resting at the nape of his neck. “Don't care what dad says.”

Kieren closes his eyes and tries to imagine standing like this all night. Rick's palm is warm on his jaw and there are inches between them that scream _friendshipandnothingmore_ , but Kieren reckons he could live with that. “I don't know what I'm gonna do when he packs you off.”

“You're gonna cry and paint a lot, maybe send me soppy letters covered in your little painty finger marks.”

Kieren smiles. “You wish.” He opens his eyes, expecting to see Rick grinning loutishly at him and ready to pull him into one of those tight hugs that he swears he gives to all his friends, but that's not what he sees at all. Rick's eyes are damp, and though he's trying to smile, it's wavering on the verge of a grimace. “Hey! Hey, Rick, c'mon mate, it's okay.”

Rick shakes his head and drags his sleeve across his face. “He's such a bastard, Ren.”

And then Rick's crying properly, ugly sobs clawing their way up his throat and out into the open. Kieren pulls him in and feels Rick bury his face in his neck, his 6ft 2” body moulding itself around Kieren's like it's always been this way, and Kieren supposes it has. “I know. I know he is.”

The last time Kieren saw Rick cry like this was when his grandmother had died and Bill hadn't let him cry at the funeral; Kieren had watched him in the churchyard, biting his lip raw and turning his knuckles white with the grip he had on the memorial booklet, and then afterwards he'd sat in Kieren's room and choked out sobs like there was nothing else in his chest. Now, standing outside the post office in the bitter cold at eleven at night, Kieren thinks Bill Macy has a lot to answer for.

Thank god you got your personality from your mum.”

Rick gives a strangled sort of laugh then, his grip on Kieren's jacket tightening a fraction. “Going to miss you.”

“It's not like you're not coming back.” Kieren knows even as he says it that he's pressing into territory they haven't spoken of so far, of the reality of a warzone, and he's almost grateful that Rick doesn't make a snarky remark because there's a heaviness behind his ribs and he's not sure he can have that conversation yet. “I bet the girls'll be all over you when you turn up in your uniform.”

Rick pushes away to wipe his nose on his sleeve, grinning. “Yeah, maybe.”

They're standing too close but neither seems to mind. Rick runs his hand down Kieren's sleeve until his thumb ghost over his wrist, and then he slips his hand into his own pocket, like nothing happened. Kieren lets him.

“Anyway, you'll probably be swanning around at art college, all fancy like, when I get leave.” Rick scuffs at the kerb again, a nervous habit he's not shrugged off since infant school. Kieren knocks their shoulders together.

“Don't be daft.” He starts as if to continue their walk, but Rick grabs his sleeve and pulls him back, gripping him tight and dropping a familial kiss in his hair. He lingers longer than he should. Kieren tilts his face up until they're eye to eye and Rick's mouth is no longer at his forehead but over his own. Kieren watches Rick swallow, the slight tremor in his throat seeming monumental up close. He finds himself thinking of all the lines he's practiced, and then he stops thinking, braces his hands either side of Rick's face and pulls him down into a kiss despite their awkward angle and chapped lips. 

Rick doesn't push him away.  

**Author's Note:**

> Again with the Siken titles (sorry)


End file.
